Weird Women at Levenshulme Old Library

To mark International Women’s Day, Levenshulme Old Library has pulled together a programme of activities called Weird Women, which includes various creative workshops plus Unheim-Lit, a showcase of strange and uncanny spoken word.

From published writers to emerging voices, the evening will feature an all-women line-up of writers based in Manchester and aims to celebrate women’s writing while raising money for Levenshulme Old Library Community Arts Centre. It’s free to attend, although a donation of £5 would be appreciated from those who are able to do so when booking so the group “can continue bringing high quality arts activities and opportunities into Levenshulme”.

On International Women’s Day itself, Unheim-Lit welcomes headliners Abi Hynes and Gaynor Jones alongside other invited writers performing their original and odd tales and poems.

Abi Hynes is an award-winning drama and fiction writer, whose debut collection of feminist speculative short stories, Monstrous Longing, came out in October with Dahlia Books. Her recent writing credits include Anne of Green Gables, an audio drama for Audible starring Sandra Oh and Catherine O’Hara, and, as a playwright, her work has been staged in theatres across the UK. Her short stories have appeared in a wide variety of journals, magazines and anthologies, and she won the Cambridge Short Story Prize in 2020.

Gaynor Jones is the author of Among These Animals, which was shortlisted for Best Novella in the Saboteur Awards 2021 and which was described by Lucie McKnight Hardy, author of Water Shall Refuse Them, as: “A beautiful and deftly-told tale of a family attempting to navigate grief.” Gaynor is the recipient of a Northern Writer’s Award and has won the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award, among others, and she is a contributor to theFly On The Wall Press anthology Of Myths And Mothers.

Reading alongside the headliners are Zena Barrie, whose debut novel, Your Friend Forever, was published in 2021 and Marie Crook, whose work has been published by creative nonfiction journal The Real Story and Confingo, among others, and who ran Levy Old Library’s creative writing workshop series Feed the Fox.

The event will be hosted by Jo Howard, a writer of children’s and young adult fiction and a poet, singer and scriptwriter. Jo runs Book Jive Live, a Zoom open mic for kidlit and YA, and co-hosted award-winning live lit night Verbose with Zena. Her work has been published in Confingo magazine and the 100 Voices anthology, and she was one of the readers for Ghosts at the Old Library.

Note that men are very much welcome to attend Unheim-Lit and refreshments will be provided by The Talleyrand.